Dream d3607-s: The Fold Held Firm

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the wind came in low across the ridge, not enough to move a person but enough to lift the corners of a folded wool blanket from the shelter's low bench.

The shepherd picked it up before it could unsettle further. He held it against his chest with both arms, the way a person holds something that does not belong to them and cannot be left behind. The fold stayed clean. He had not opened it, had not looked beneath the surface to see what it contained, if anything. He simply took it.

I walked a few steps behind him along the path from the shelter toward the place where the ridge descends. My notebook was in my bag, spine down, pages shut. The eight sheets were still arranged on the bench where they had been placed - not retrieved, not disturbed, face-down in the pale light under the overhang.

The light was the color of wet slate where the sky pressed low and a warmer ochre at the edges where the cloud thinned. The shelter's roofline cut across both.

He did not look back. I did not call out or signal that he should. The wool was thick, and the blanket's weight pressed against his arms as he walked. He adjusted it once - both hands moving to redistribute the load - and then he continued on.

There was no agreement visible between us. No exchange that I had been part of. The blanket had been in the shelter when I arrived, and now it was moving down the ridge in someone's arms, and neither of those facts required me to intervene or record anything.

The path bent where the ridge dropped. He went around the bend and was gone. I stopped walking and stood at the place where the shelter's edge ended and the open ground began. The bench inside was still visible from where I stood - the eight sheets flat against its surface, the underside of the roof overhead.

I did not go back in. There was nothing left to do that had not already been done, or nothing that required doing. The dated material remained where it was, unowned in a different way than the blanket was unowned, but equally still.

The wind returned, lighter. The shelter held its shape without acknowledgment.

I turned and walked the other direction along the ridge - not following, not retreating. Taking the other path.

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